On Sunday night I was lucky enough to see Richie spin at Lush in London, Ontario with a capacity crowd of 360 people. He came out around 12:30 and spun the hardest, fastest and most extreme set of techno I've ever felt in my life.
I don't think I ever saw him look up at the crowd. Until 5 in the morning, he focused on the music, dropping one record after another, turning knobs, cross fading, toying with his 909 and continually finding some way to bring lifeless banging techno tracks to life. Beginning with the first record, Richie punished the crowd with his intensity. After about an hour, I felt very very spent. Not only was my body sore from dancing so hard, but my body was beginning to ache from the punishing nature of the music. The basslines shook by bones as the pounding rattled my brain. I happen to have a sick taste for the Jeff Mills school of techno: minimal, banging tracks with subtle modulation and transformations. But even my tolerance couldn't handle Richie's set. Everything felt pitched up to +8. Just when a track was beginning to get monotonous after about 30 seconds or so, he would tweak the bassline or mute the highs. The sound was continually in a state of flux despite its stagnant nature. In the end, I had gone through many phases of dancing and exhaustion during his 5 hour set. Just when my legs begged me to sit down, he would drop a track that would just rock my world and make me start dancing again. If any of you get a chance to go see him in Toronto this upcoming weekend, I would recommend it. There isn't any other DJ -- not even Jeff Mills -- than can match Richie's technical skills. He takes bland, lifeless, banging techno records and brings them to life. It's almost as though his use of the EQ and 909 shapes the tracks more than the original producer. Given the hard/harder/hardest nature of his set, it was nice to see just as many girls getting off as guys. Perhaps this may be attributed to the close proximity of Toronto. In any event, there was a strange sado-masachistic vibe going on. Richie loved exhausting the crowd with his sheer intensity while the crowd kept dancing for hours, soaking up every moment of pounding techno until we all had to collapse at 5. After his reprise of Cybersonik's "Machine Gun" -- a track I could never stand -- John Acquaviva took over. You had to feel bad for him. Not only had Richie just laid down a set that could never be matched, but he also had completely exhausted the crowd. Acquaviva started things off with Kenny Dixon Jr.'s "Shades of J." We stayed for this beautiful track but soon left. I had experienced enough techno for one night. Again, go see him in Toronto if you get the chance. And then go see Jeff Mills in March when he comes to Toronto. They may spin crazy techno, but you they will change the way you percieve the art of DJing. After watching Richie for 5 hours, I look at DJing in a different light. Many DJs let the records speak. Ritchie made his records talk. Jason Birchmeier
